Worst ongoing plotline in the second season of Twin Peaks (SPOILERS)

Just had to scan the list for "James" and I knew which one I voted for. It's really a dumb plot with the dumbest character and introducing a couple other go-nowhere characters that you don't care about.

I could have done entirely without Dick as a character, so I picked the babysitting plotline, even though Andy was sort of funny in it.

The *only* storyline I absolutely hated was the fucking tedious James story. All of the others were at least okay, and I must confess that I love the Civil War thing.

totally OTM came here to voice this exact sentiment

It's definitely walking away w the win.

I didn't like James even when he was relevant to the plot, but at least I understood why he was there, and his character worked and had a few great scenes. As soon as he entered this subplot, I wanted everyone to be murdered horribly.

xposts I have to say I liked Dick. Totally could have lived without him, and I felt sad that Andy & Lucy were put in doubt (it was nice to have some innocence in a terrible world), but I did think his character was pretty funny in itself.

Would have voted babysitting plot second - Dick annoyed the shit out of me every second he was onscreen, and the story overexposed Andy and Lucy to the point where my previous affection for them was considerably eroded.

I love the ending though, cannot imagine voting for the Black Lodge climax. How much was the final scene intended as "let's deliberately end this thing on a bleak, unsettling note" or "load up the cliffhangers in hopes of a write-in campaign to save the show"?

aww I liked James. Mainly because he was nice to look at.

Voted for the Annie plotline.

The Lynch episodes in Season 2 are so fucking good. Some of the best moments in the series.

Dick is annoying and silly but having him in here is a good introduction to his destructive parody of the character on "On the Air".

Windom Earl for me. his plotline just didn't fit with the tone of the show, and suddenly casts Agent Cooper as the kind a guy that would have had an affair with his partner/friend's wife, which just struck me as very un-Dale

Maybe the thinking was that since James had no interesting qualities whatsoever, the only thing to do was to fling him outside of the entire milieu of the show for a while. The downside was that they actually filmed that stuff instead of just writing him out, which is where I thought it was going when he rode off into the sunset.

James was the worst. I don't understand why he wasn't just written out, unless the network thought he was some sort of draw for the teen audience? I remember the actor being hyped in a lot of teen magazines.

Only value in seeing James in the second season is making jokes about him leaving town to audition for the Twilight films.

i actually think the whole window earle thing was much more deadly to the show than the james thing (which was terrible don't get me wrong). the james thing ended -- the windom earle thing sucked up the entire second half of the season and was almost completely worthless, the role of col. briggs excepted.

from a ratings point of view the worst decision they made (or was it a decision or just an error?) was to let a few episodes pass between the resolution of the laura palmer mystery and the ramping up of the window earle plotline. the slack was taken up with the lamebrained plot with the french-canadian drug kingpin whose name i forget, cooper's investigation by the FBI, etc. nobody gave a shit about that, and i think that's when the ratings definitively tanked and the show's fate was sealed.

from not-lame-at-all to utterly fucking lame:

Windom and Annie, with Cooper in pursuit, locate and enter the Black Lodge
Cooper and Truman work to solve the murder of Laura Palmer
Gordon discovers that he can hear Shelly's voice PERFECTLY
Donna befriends a shut-in named Harold Smith, with terrible consequences
Bobby and Shelly's relationship is strained as they take care of a semi-comatose Leo
Donna becomes convinced that there is a connection between her family and Ben Horne
Audrey gets mixed up in the business of One-Eyed Jack's and needs rescuing
Cooper and Truman, with Pete's chess finesse, try to outwit Windom Earle
Josie is re-embroiled in the Martel saga as Andrew Packard and Thomas Eckhardt reappear
Ben Horne becomes obsessed with the Civil War, and tries to turn over a new leaf
The mayor's fiancee exerts a dumbfounding force on all men, for some reason
The Martels and Andrew try to unravel the secret of Eckhardt's puzzle box
Nadine, suffering from amnesia, returns to high school with superhuman strength
Andy and Dick compete for Lucy's approval as prospective fathers through babysitting, etc.
Cooper meets Norma's ex-nun sister Annie and falls in love
Audrey gets involved in staging a fundraiser for the Pine Weasel, and falls for Billy Zane
Ed and Norma attempt to pursue their long-forestalled love
The upcoming Miss Twin Peaks contest is on everybody's minds
Windom Earle, using Leo as his pawn, engages in kidnapping and murder in the woods
Harry tries to come to terms with the fallout of the Josie saga
James leaves town and becomes mixed up in the torrid affair of Evelyn, Malcolm and Jeffrey
Cooper, with the help of Dennis/Denise, tries to clear his name after a frame-up

Yeah but the meta intersection of X-Files and Twin Peaks is fairly enjoyable.

one thing I will say though is that I get scary flashbacks just reading the descriptions of a lot of these. That show was too fucking effective.

from a ratings point of view the worst decision they made (or was it a decision or just an error?) was to let a few episodes pass between the resolution of the laura palmer mystery and the ramping up of the window earle plotline. the slack was taken up with the lamebrained plot with the french-canadian drug kingpin whose name i forget, cooper's investigation by the FBI, etc. nobody gave a shit about that, and i think that's when the ratings definitively tanked and the show's fate was sealed.

This is interesting! Yeah, I think you're on to something, even though I actually didn't mind the Jacques Renault stuff, given that it seemed to ride the momentum of things already introduced (One-Eyed Jack's, the seamy underbelly). Jacques was just weak, villain-wise. But certainly there was a weird interregnum there, as if the Laura story was meant to overlap the Windom material, but finished ahead of schedule.

Well, I always heard it was the decision of the station/backers to reveal the Laura thing, and actually it was originally planned to continue for most of the series. Anyone back me up on this with fact rather than rumour?

Really bizarre that they would solve Laura's murder in the middle of the season rather than build up to a finale or something.

yeah the murder was solved early (or at all) do to pressure from the network

due

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that Lynch wanted Laura's murder to go unsolved for the span of the series.

I love Lynch's metaphor about killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

Yeah it just seems like such a stupid thing to do, to solve it in the middle of a season. I can understand the network pressuring them to do it but I don't see why they didn't put it at the end of the season. At the very least it would give plenty of time to hype it up. It must have been the network's decision to put it that early in the season. Idiots.

Also, amateurist, I think you may be on to something wrt the plot fugue playing a big role in the declining viewer interest, but I think Lynch more or less abandoning the show to work on Wild at Heart (and I think some other stuff...Industrial Symphony, maybe?) played the bigger role in its demise. The two causes were probably pretty intertwined, honestly.

The early resolution was also maybe an outgrowth of it starting from a short first season - if Laura Palmer had been dragged all the way through to the end of Season 2 they might have lost the viewers anyway and we'd be complaining about "that damn Laura Palmer plot that refused to end, while intriguing threads like the murderess Evelyn went undeveloped" or whatever. I mean, killing the golden goose yeah, but how long can you tease a plotline like that without just driving people crazy?

They should've kept up with "Invitation to Love".

I sort of know what you mean, Dr Casino, but at least if the creators had been allowed to choose that, then we might not have had stuff that felt rushed or shoehorned in. I will say as well, though, that the first season doesn't seem short to me, really. I know that US programmes do go on for a lot longer than UK ones, but I think that's kind of their big failing. Almost all of the stuff I like lasts for about two British series lengths - so about 12 episodes in total?

I have to say I liked Dick.

― emil.y

Hey! No fair!

Or, wait, is it just me who read that as "taking posts out of context"?

I also don't mind the length of season 1 - in fact, if TP had been done as a string of six-episode miniseries it might have actually worked even better. I just think season one PLUS two as the length to get to Laura's murderer - - that'd be, what, five British seasons? People would be screaming.

I voted James Hurley on the road, but I do have to say Windom Earle was a huge letdown. When we first hear about him Cooper is petrified and the moment feels really powerful and then he turns out to be kind of pathetic and silly.

Yeah, I would more or less cosign that; I didn't hate him onscreen and he did seem suitably evil and twisted but he just wasn't quite as terrifying in the flesh as he was as a vague threat coming in from beyond. Always a risk when you set a villain up that much though - "Wait 'til Martin comes!"

Hrm, I guess I should have listed the continuing war between Catherine Martel and Ben Horne, but I suppose that's sort of covered under the umbrellas of some of the others.

My ranking of these -

ACTUALLY WAS INTO THIS AND IT MADE THE SHOW STILL WORTH IT

Cooper and Truman work to solve the murder of Laura Palmer
Audrey gets mixed up in the business of One-Eyed Jack's and needs rescuing
Donna befriends a shut-in named Harold Smith, with terrible consequences
Donna becomes convinced that there is a connection between her family and Ben Horne
Cooper, with the help of Dennis/Denise, tries to clear his name after a frame-up
Windom and Annie, with Cooper in pursuit, locate and enter the Black Lodge
Josie is re-embroiled in the Martel saga as Andrew Packard and Thomas Eckhardt reappear
Gordon discovers that he can hear Shelly's voice PERFECTLY
Harry tries to come to terms with the fallout of the Josie saga
The Martels and Andrew try to unravel the secret of Eckhardt's puzzle box
Ed and Norma attempt to pursue their long-forestalled love
Cooper and Truman, with Pete's chess finesse, try to outwit Windom Earle
Ben Horne becomes obsessed with the Civil War, and tries to turn over a new leaf

...although I'd add that the Donna father thing suffered from it being really obvious where it was all going, while Donna pouted around being apparently too dense to put together the really, really obvious clues. And Gordon and Shelly is a throwaway, but a genuinely amusing one so I don't mind it being in there at all. Josie I accept only because it's crucial to Harry's plotline, about which I gave a shit.

STARTED OUT OKAY BUT DIDN'T GO ANYWHERE AND/OR GOT OLD FAST

The mayor's fiancee exerts a dumbfounding force on all men, for some reason
Bobby and Shelly's relationship is strained as they take care of a semi-comatose Leo
Windom Earle, using Leo as his pawn, engages in kidnapping and murder in the woods
The upcoming Miss Twin Peaks contest is on everybody's minds this was fine once it got us to the climax obviously, but all of Windom's clue-dropping and disguise-playing really didn't actually go anywhere.

LIKE NAILS ON A CHALKBOARD EVERY SECOND THAT THIS WAS GOING ON

Audrey gets involved in staging a fundraiser for the Pine Weasel, and falls for Billy Zane
Nadine, suffering from amnesia, returns to high school with superhuman strength
James leaves town and becomes mixed up in the torrid affair of Evelyn, Malcolm and Jeffrey
Andy and Dick compete for Lucy's approval as prospective fathers through babysitting, etc.
Cooper meets Norma's ex-nun sister Annie and falls in love

Teenage Nadine was maybe okay for the first, like, two scenes. In a way, I think the Billy Zane and Annie plots are the most damaging - I never liked James in the first place, and Andy and Lucy were comic relief from the get-go, but to hitch two of the most interesting characters to these really...really...really unexciting romantic pairs actually made you like the protagonists less, according to the "what does he see in her?" principle. It made Cooper seem way less cool, and Annie's total blandness worked against the idea that somehow getting drawn in by this woman was throwing him off his game and causing him to make mistakes. This is what's wrecking Coop's concentration? With Audrey you at least go, well, she's a teenager (even if you see her at school, like, twice), teenagers fall for good looking bland people. But it still sucked.

The *only* storyline I absolutely hated was the fucking tedious James story. All of the others were at least okay, and I must confess that I love the Civil War thing.

totally OTM came here to voice this exact sentiment

Spent those sections half-heartedly punching the couch in frustration

http://cdn.static.ovimg.com/episode/11692.jpg

Dick: “Andy I believe that Little Nicky, incredible as it may seem, may in fact be the devil.”

Nadine, suffering from amnesia, returns to high school with superhuman strength

The three I really hated were Nadine back in high school, James' love triangle, and the Civil War stuff. I know many people like the latter--the appeal completely escapes me. I love everything having to do with Windom Earle. I guess I'll register the only Civil War vote.

Isn't the first season pretty short, like 10 eps or something? And the second is more the standard 22 or whatever? I watched season one for the first time recently since the original air date and actually had some trouble with it, but most disturbing was how many memories of the show I had that were from the second season, and not the first.

So, maybe this belongs in more a general-purpose TP thread, but I just watched the pilot for what I think must be the first time (when I watched the show my roommate didn't have that DVD and just gave me a recap). It's actually really striking how different it is from where the show ended up...I feel like a lot of things changed gradually, just in terms of tone and focus, so that by the time it got to this round-robin goofball show of high school Nadine, Civil War Ben, and Andy/Dick/Lucy antics, you didn't exactly notice where it had all changed. But man - the pilot is damned spooky, brilliantly loose-ended (in the sense of there being no really strong effort to set up plausible murder suspects), almost unrelentingly downbeat, and incredibly human. The opening scenes with people reacting to this horrible crime are really, really affecting...you can see why people would have wanted more of this show! (Audrey notwithstanding, who seems totally unsympathetic and annoying in this iteration.)

I wonder if the ongoing project of exposing all these people as having their own dark secrets and skeletons in the closet actually robs the show of its emotional impact in this way, even more so than making half of them into clowns. Of course the "dark secrets" thing is kind of thematically crucial so it's a no-win. But man, that pilot was great. Long, but really nails the eerie emptiness of being out in the woods in the dark.

Yeah, season one is only eight episodes - ends with Cooper getting shot by a mystery assailant in his hotel room.

The pilot is very different in tone--closer to something like River's Edge, but better. Grim and serious. I think of the principal breaking down during his announcement of Laura's death, or (as I remember it, unless I'm thinking of Elephant) the shot of student running past the classroom screaming. I can't remember if the tone changed suddenly, or if it was more of a gradual thing.

Yeah, student screaming is totally in it. Everybody just seems totally shaken and shattered. Even things like Truman being really short with Andy about him crying, sort of feels out of character based on later developments - or just, Harry's on edge and trying to keep it together himself.

otm dr. c

I was introduced to and immediately absorbed by the show when i was thirteen or so, right around the same time I had my first real experience w/ the death of a friend. A kid I was friends with died in a car crash & the degree to which that wrenched MY community from within i guess i found some parallel with in the TP pilot & the subsequent reverberation of grief, dread & uncertainty throughout the first & early second season.

Pretty sure they didn't set up the killer from day one, but rewatching that pilot when you know who it is, your mind picks up on so many hints. For instance, Leland apparently knows his daughter is dead before hearing it from the police.

Yeah, it's subtle, because it also reads just fine as "he just got this phone call from his wife and can just kind of sense the dread in the air and what Harry's probably about to tell him." I was also really interested in his reaction shots at the morgue when he sees Laura's body.

Bob is in the pilot, and Bob killed Laura so

Also right when he's on the phone with his wife, and she asks if he was with her. The instant he says "No" a police car drives into view, pretty much right into his head the way the scene is framed. He says "Maybe she was with Bobby". Bob. Bobbby. Eh?

Maybe reading too much into this.

I'm just realizing that, despite having seen everything through about the middle of season 2 more times than I can count, I might've only ever seen the last stretch of the season once. On the VHS boxset, before any of TP was available on DVD. I probably should rectify that. That said, I do remember being the most underwhelmed by the James storyline.

I think the realisation that a crossbow is far more terrifying than a gun drags Windom across into classic for me.

Also I really should rewatch all of this.

James is cool

Also that scene is one of the best bits of the entire run

insanity

i hate it so much

https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/20/lx45gkyjy4tf05xcbx2z.png

James has ALWAYS been cool!

James is canonically a dipshit, it’s good

I’ve never understood reaction to that scene, at least if you’ve bought into the whole vibe of the show up to that point it surely makes perfect sense that there is this performance going on in the palmer living room, with the heightened artificiality of the vocal effects & the musical backing that cannot possibly be diegetic (but maybe is?? There’s always music in the air) & also it’s v funny because it’s dipshit James doing his teenybop scotty Ferguson bit toward his dead gf’s doppelgänger while his current gf is also in the room because they are both singing backing vocals on a song called “just you” lol — and then Donna & James rush out of the room and BOB comes in, not appearing out of thin air as previously but literally walking in from the other room, and crawls over the couch directly at the camera?

Start to finish that has to be top 10 most quintessential lynch scenes ever, not just TP

"just you and i" is amazing!!!!

The deliberately ridiculous singing alone is a joy

tension between donna and maddie is unbelievable in that scene

everything in season 2 is good

love 'just you and i,' it's perfect. there's something in it that is emphasized a lot more in the return, individuals being fated by their archetypes, the doppelganger who is caught in larger patterns, a magnetic pull towards your place in the cosmos regardless of how you stuggle against it in an effort to "fix" things. it adds such tragedy to donna's jealousy, she sees her position slipping out of her grasp because she isn't the girl and james is the guy, doesn't matter that he's a doofus, he has the motorcycle and the guitar

otm, great post

I'm with VG on this sorry

There were six to ten S2 episodes where I was wimpy punching the couch wishing it was over

Speaking of cringey dudes, if a poll-thread is made for Worst character/plotline in the third season of Twin Peaks (SPOILERS):

Wally Brando/Michael Cera would definitely be up there.

:/ agreed, awful moment in an otherwise perfect season

In retrospect, since the show was set in the Pacific Northwest in 1989, James should really have been a grunge balladeer instead of a Paul Anka throwback.

the wally brando scene is so fucking funny

The whole point is that TP is out of time

Widow Milford subplot deserved some votes

I would've voted for (the first half of) "Ben Horne becomes obsessed with the Civil War, and tries to turn over a new leaf," which last time I rewatched was pointless, irritating, and, as silly as it is, pretty dodgy in a Lost Cause way

great post karlakrlarkal

ppl horrendously not otm about wally brando

The whole point is that TP is out of time

...or that Lynch switched off his cultural perceptions around 1962.

The Nine Inch Nails

the point of James was that he was a wet noodle
i can understand and appreciate his character’s purpose while ALSO finding him to be a wet noodle
and that doesn’t include nor will it ever include wanting to hear him sing me the song of his people ie that he is a wet noodle

if i am to tolerate James then the least he could do is NOT. SING.

the wally brando scene, especially in the context of those first few episodes of the return when everyone was still trying to get a handle on it, was and remains incredible

some of the freddie sykes stuff on the other hand…

I love all of that

Maybe more for the other thread but I just got to the Brando ep in my rewatch the other night, I think I like it even more than I did the first time

Speaking of cringey dudes [...] Wally Brando/Michael Cera would definitely be up there.

... wasn't that the entire point of that scene? Robert Forster can barely keep a straight face.

and OMG i want to kick Harold and his 2-cent Norman Bates impression into the fucking sun

OTM, especially when he’s “menacing” Donna and Maddie after they attempt to steal the diary. There’s two of them versus a wimp with a hand rake—just push past him!

My vote is more the absence of a plot line: the lack of reaction to Leland’s guilt. You’d think that Donna would be traumatized by learning a man she saw often had been molesting her best friend. Or Jacoby, having finally learned Laura’s secret. Instead, the town seems to shrug and move on after the funeral reception—which is all the more bizarre considering it’s only been about two weeks since Laura died.

I think that episode is the low of the series to me, even if goofier stuff followed--it just seems so disrespectful of what came before, especially considering how the pilot dwelled on grief. This should have been a big moment but instead we get slapstick with the mayor. You really feel the network/new writers coming in and saying, “OK, enough of that stuff, time to do our own thing."

otm, and the final episode of s2 feels like a correction in that regard: lynch comes back in & brings back maddy & ronette (the one bafflingly forgotten as soon as she’s murdered, the other pretty much only ever appearing in lynch-directed eps), the palmer family also return (Sarah also having disappeared after the wake, like how on earth do you do that ffs), Laura palmer is literally screaming in our faces &c. And then the film even more so obv. I like the post-wklp episodes but I’d be way more down on them if those corrections didn’t exist, as it is the tone shift feels like the town/show making a supernatural effort to bury deeply this terrible secret, which never goes well in lynch

Although it wasn’t so much new writers coming in as existing staff writers being left holding the bag after both lynch & frost checked out

i think fire walk with me is a corrective in that way, where it does get you to sit with the reality of how she died and who killed her and it doesn’t at all let you turn away from that, the way much of s2 does

ugh i memory-holed so much of this and now it’s all flooding back to me like a blocked sewer drain

piper laurie in asian-face

help me i am in hell

u guys so much of this season really is the pits

you're still in the part of season two i like!!!! agreed that the asian-face is terrible tho

very unnecessary plotline, also not sure why multiple characters had to be masters of disguise in season two of twin peaks

There’s two of them versus a wimp with a hand rake—just push past him!

he immediately turns it on himself [drawing that super-fake mark across his face with the visibly pre-bloodied rake]: he's emotionally terrorizing them, not blocking their path. (who hasn't met this guy.) nevertheless "2-cent norman bates impression" pretty undeniable but i do like "there are things you can't get in books" "there are things you can't get anywhere, but we dream they can be found in other people"

ratty norman bates cornering donna & maddy with the little garden tool is v funny, esp when maddy screams the fuckin house down and all he did was scrape his own face slightly!
i mean this is the same girl who screamed at a stain on the carpet
like u may look like Laura but if yr gonna live in this town u can’t pee yr pants every time u see a shadow TOUGHEN UP MADDY JFC

tbf all she did was come to a funeral and it's like she fell into a dream

then again she’s been staying in that cursed fkn house for all this time w Leland & Sarah & BOB so screaming all the time is prob understandable, all things considered

guy that played Harold was really terrible (RIP I guess). He's no better when he shows up in FWWM.

Lynch is fond of Ronnette, it's not for nothing that she showed up in the Return also (in another dimension with no name)

Harold! That's my man Edgar, Lenny Van Dohlen, from Electric Dreams. Okay he's not very good in that either but it's still a classic.

oh wow i forgot he was in Electric Dreams! he def looks better w the glasses & a bowtie. also he had better hair in that

wasn’t so much new writers coming in as existing staff writers being left holding the bag

and Engels (ie 50% of the staff writers) wrote Fire Walk With Me

e7 of season 2, the one directed by lynch, def feels like a reprieve … we’re not so brightly let, everything gets a bit more muted & sombre & proper weird again

(salvation army bouncing rubber balls lmao)

*lit